Virtual
by Hollow Mashiro
Summary: About a month after XANA is supposedly defeated, there is an incident with the supercomputer at the factory, and strange things start happening to the Lyoko Warriors. Meanwhile, between akuma attacks, Ladybug and Chat Noir are investigating a series of baffling electrical disturbances which are indicative of a lurking evil that they can't fight alone...
1. The Incident

Important note: this takes place after season 1 of Miraculous Ladybug, after season 4 of Code Lyoko, and disregards Evolution. I'm moving the Lyoko Warriors up about a decade temporally to put them in the same time period as Ladybug and Chat Noir – let's just say that the supercomputer spent an extra decade sleeping. Ages: Marinette, Adrien, Odd, Ulrich, Jeremy: 15; Yumi, William: 16 (decided to age up the Lyoko Warriors a little bit).

* * *

Chapter 1 – The Incident

"…just doesn't make any sense. Franz Hopper _powered_ the supercomputer with a nuclear battery, but the core of the machine… I don't see how he was able to create an interface between the digital world and the material one. XANA had to port resources from our supercomputer to influence the real world around the Replikas. Not to mention the Return to the Past program, which can affect the entire globe! Quantum computing… That kind of technology should be centuries away," Jeremy chattered as he picked at his cafeteria lunch. Aelita was listening closely. Yumi, Ulrich, and Odd… not so much.

"Give it a rest, Einstein. The supercomputer's off. That's what we decided. XANA's gone. It's been a whole month. We shouldn't think about that stuff anymore," Odd groaned.

Jeremy glowered at him. "We were so busy fighting XANA and trying to save Aelita and William that we never gave the existence of the supercomputer itself a second thought. But now… something just isn't adding up. There was something missing from Franz Hopper's diary."

"Jeremy's right," Aelita said. "But I don't think we should be poking at it carelessly. We explored all of Lyoko and Carthage, but I bet there's still more to the supercomputer that we haven't found. Even XANA couldn't access everything."

"I'd rather not risk awakening some other program that wants to take over the world," Odd said sarcastically.

"The supercomputer is dangerous. We should probably find a way to destroy it, honestly…" Yumi said, pushing some peas around on her plate.

"Oh, horrors. Destroying a revolutionary piece of technology," Ulrich deadpanned, noticing Jeremy's scandalized look. "She's got a good point, you know."

"Let's not be hasty about something like that," Aelita defended. "My father…"

The others glanced at each other uncomfortably. They were all acutely aware of the sacrifice Aelita's father had made so that XANA could be wiped out. Shutting down the supercomputer was one thing, but destroying her last link to him wasn't something they could just consider lightly.

"Well, the supercomputer's off, right? So it's not like it can really be a problem. For the time being, we can just keep an eye on the factory so no one else finds it," Ulrich said reasonably, his thoughts on the matter changing at the reminder of Franz Hopper's final act.

It wasn't the first time the group had had this conversation. It wasn't the second, or even the fifth time they'd talked about it. Lyoko and XANA had been such an influential part of their lives – it was hard to decide what to do with the supercomputer, beyond shutting it down. Destroy it, protect it, turn it back on, or study its secrets? Opinions kept changing, and the group couldn't come to a consensus – though their friendship was as strong as ever. Jeremy had compiled their memories of Lyoko on CDs for each warrior to take home, but with the war against XANA suddenly over… it was hard to adjust to being normal students when they'd been fighting to save the world not too long ago. Plus, all of them still had nightmares of some of the closer scrapes they'd had with XANA's attacks.

"Don't worry about the supercomputer, Einstein. It's probably nothing," Odd said between bites of his food.

Jeremy thought about it for a moment. The mystery of the supercomputer still nagged at him, but… "Yeah, you're probably right. I'm just overthinking things…" he sighed, slumping.

"Like usual," Ulrich teased. Jeremy glared at him in response.

"Hey, look, it's William," Odd pointed out, gesturing with his spoon toward the black-haired boy, who was quietly getting his lunch, shoulders hunched in on himself.

The Lyoko Warriors shifted guiltily in their seats and refused to make eye contact with each other or with William. It was their fault he'd been captured. XANA's possession had definitely left a scar on William, deeper than any of the others carried. He was noticeably quieter, shying away from the friends his doppelganger had gathered and avoiding the Lyoko Warriors after the disastrous attempt to aid them during the final battle with XANA – though whether it was out of shame or anger, they couldn't tell.

"Hello~!" Sissi sing-songed as she approached the table, distracting the group. They'd finally allowed Sissi to tentatively befriend them – something she'd been trying to do for months – once the threat of XANA was gone, though talking about the supercomputer and their adventures was obviously taboo with her around. There were at least two incidences when she'd told her father of Lyoko and they'd had to wipe her memory with the Return to the Past. It built an invisible wall between the Lyoko Warriors and Sissi, which caused tension, but Sissi stubbornly clung to them anyway, perhaps hoping they'd spill their secrets eventually.

When Odd looked up again, William had vanished.

* * *

"We've got to do something about William," Aelita said once Sissi had left to go see her father about something. Lunch was almost over and class was about to start, but they'd been dodging the issue for a whole month, and enough was enough. They couldn't just keep ignoring William, not after all he'd been through both on their side and XANA's.

"And do what? Say, 'Hi, we're sorry we dragged you into our mess even though you volunteered and got you possessed for half a year, please forgive us?' That'll go over well," Odd scoffed, poking holes into his Styrofoam tray with a plastic fork.

"That was his own fault. He was too reckless," Ulrich scowled.

"We should invite him back into the group," Aelita murmured contemplatively. "I mean, we all have each other for when we have nightmares and other Lyoko problems, but he's alone. He can't be doing too well."

"Plus, he hasn't said anything to anyone about Lyoko," Jeremy pointed out. "We owe it to him to try to help."

"Ugh, seriously?" Ulrich groaned.

"And after everything he's done, I really don't trust him," Yumi added.

"Look, I know you don't like him, but Lyoko was our responsibility. He was part of the group, and he remembers everything. We can't just leave him hanging. That would be cruel. What if you had to deal with everything from Lyoko by yourself?" Aelita argued.

There was silence as the rest of the group digested her words. Yumi looked down at her hands guiltily. Aelita was right; they really couldn't leave William alone. Maybe at the beginning Lyoko had just been an adventure, trying to save a girl trapped in a computer, but the battle with XANA to save the world had morphed into a very real responsibility that all of them had to shoulder – a responsibility that included caring for their team members, the originals and the recruits.

"Okay. So I guess we're tracking down William, then?" Odd concluded.

"Yeah. Maybe we can't trust him, but we can't leave him alone, either. Let's meet in Jeremy's room. I'll pull him aside after class lets out," Yumi volunteered as she stood up and started gathering her trash.

* * *

"Hi, William! It's good to see you!" Aelita said cheerfully as Yumi ushered a stony-faced William into Jeremy's dorm some hours later. William nodded politely to her and scanned the room, which the other warriors were scattered in, before sitting cross-legged on the carpet.

"So, uh, how've you been?" Odd asked awkwardly, trying to break the ice.

"I've been doing alright," William said quietly, staring down at his shoelaces. It was a distinct contrast from his personality before XANA – he'd been loud and determined, stubborn but compassionate. Now he was a wraith of his former self.

"I don't believe you," Ulrich said, eyes narrow, trying to goad a response out of William. This meekness didn't suit him.

"What do you want me to say?" William said, glaring at Ulrich.

"Well, we wanted to talk to you about Lyoko and XANA," Jeremy said, noting William's slight flinch.

"What, like a debriefing? Well, XANA was an ass, and I lost months from my life," William said sarcastically. "Great times."

"We understand that it was terrible—" Odd began.

"You understand nothing!" William snarled furiously, his entire body suddenly bristling with energy. "I was awake the whole time he had me, you know. I had to watch as he used my body to do terrible things, both in the virtual world and in reality, and I couldn't stop him! People _died_ because of me!"

"You were awake?" Aelita asked, aghast. "I thought you didn't remember anything!"

"Yeah," William said, slumping as he realized he'd confessed to his weakness. "I… didn't want to admit it. He could have knocked me out. I don't know why he kept me awake."

"You couldn't drive him out even though he left you conscious?" Ulrich said skeptically, a bit hostile.

"It's not like I didn't try! I even succeeded a couple times!" William snapped angrily.

"That's enough, you two," Jeremy said sternly before Ulrich could fire back with a callous remark about William not trying hard enough. Disliking William was no excuse for ridiculing his ordeal.

Yumi and Aelita looked at each other uneasily as the room descended into uncomfortable silence, each thinking about the torment William had no doubt suffered. XANA wasn't the most logical entity, revealing its hatred of and frustration with the Lyoko Warriors many a time, but allowing William room to try to rebel was just asking for trouble. Was XANA trying to mold William into a willing servant? Did XANA want to torment William for joining the Lyoko Warriors? Or was William just lying for sympathy (though that seemed unlikely because he'd been genuinely distressed the past month)? Aelita swallowed as she considered the possibilities, none of which were pleasant.

Yumi, for her part, focused on aiding William. "Why didn't you come to us sooner?" Yumi asked gently. "We could have helped."

"Aside from the warm welcome I've gotten from Mr. Samurai over here?" William jerked a finger at Ulrich.

"Ignore Ulrich; he's probably just pissy that he got a bad grade on that last algebra test or something," Odd said. It wasn't the most sensitive of statements, but it did get William to relax a fraction. Ulrich for his part, gave Odd an absolutely filthy stink-eye for the comment.

William sighed and fidgeted uncomfortably. "I thought, after all I'd done… you wouldn't want me," he finally mumbled. "I mean, you obviously don't trust me."

Ulrich pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering something about how he just couldn't be mad at this guy. Aelita cautiously approached William and enveloped him in a brief hug from the side.

"Maybe it'll take a while to earn our trust again, but it's not like you asked XANA to possess you," she said. "We're not going to ignore a Lyoko Warrior who's been hurt."

"You know, there was a time when Ulrich was kicked off the team for using the Return to the Past program without my consent," Jeremy said, approaching from William's other side. "And I was kicked off when XANA tricked us into believing the scanners were faulty when I'd said they were safe. It's not like you're the only one who's messed up."

"Buddy, you went through a sucky situation that we threw you headfirst into. You don't think we won't try to help? Maybe some of us don't like you all that well or trust you—" Odd said, glancing at Ulrich and Yumi, "—but we can at least recognize what you've done for us. You know, when you weren't possessed by XANA."

"A pep talk from you, Odd? I'm lucky," William said, a smirk ghosting across his lips. Yumi wouldn't admit it out loud, but the beginning of the return of William's spirit relieved her.

"Talk to us," Aelita said, wrapping her arms around her knees. "You've probably got it worse, but it's not like the rest of us don't have our own nightmares from XANA."

"Oh, right, you've been at it longer than I have… I'm sure you've had your fair share of close calls," William said.

"No kidding," Odd snorted. "Remember the time I almost drowned? Or the time I got split into three and almost disintegrated? Or that time when I was Jeremified?"

"Jeremified?" William repeated bemusedly.

"Uh, long story. Point is, we've got our own horror stories, and we're not about to abandon someone who's gone through something similar," Odd said firmly, remarkably serious – for a second. "Though if you want someone to cuddle with you at night, I'll have to direct you toward Ulrich."

Ulrich started sputtering indignantly while William threw back his head and laughed. It was genuine, if a bit rusty. "Thanks, guys," he said, amused. "One more thing to add to my nightmares."

Aelita smiled. If William was joking, he had to be feeling better, or at least reassured.

"Hey, Ulrich is a perfectly good cuddler," Odd defended. "I should know; he comes to my bed all the time to snuggle."

"I do not!" Ulrich denied, whacking Odd over the head for embarrassing him in front of Yumi. "Quit making things up!"

Yumi giggled as Ulrich and Odd argued. Maybe she didn't trust William… but he'd been through a lot, like the rest of them. Maybe they should give him another chance. She was willing to try, at least. Ulrich might be a little testy about William's feelings for her, but she was sure he'd come around eventually.

* * *

It took a month of cautious interactions and some heart-to-heart chats about what happened on Lyoko before the group warmed up to William again. Everyone had supported Aelita while she recovered from the loss of her father during the first month, and comfort after nightmares of XANA attacks had become a regular occurrence after the first few months of XANA getting more and more deadly. Working with William wasn't so different, if more intense because of the possession.

Yumi found that William opened up to her the most – about the despair when he attacked the other Lyoko Warriors and others, about the fear as he watched everyone get kicked around, about the hatred of XANA that was sometimes the only thing that kept him sane. She was a good listener, and his crush on her – which he was actually subtle about – probably smoothed things over.

William didn't confide in Ulrich or Odd nearly as much, but the more athletic boys bonded through sparring hand-to-hand, something all the warriors (including Jeremy, though he wasn't very good) had picked up to better fight XANA. Ulrich had been a bad sport about the spars in the beginning, but they found a tentative friendship between the sniped insults that lost their heat and William's defense of Ulrich when he was about to get into trouble with Jim. Odd was naturally more easygoing, if a little harder to get along with because of his sometimes inappropriate jokes about William's possession, though things got better once Odd learned where the line was and stopped crossing it.

Aelita and William got along well, connecting through the precious things they had lost to XANA: her father and his time and autonomy. And Jeremy tried to engage William through schoolwork and information about the supercomputer, though he was more successful some days than others.

As William slowly recovered, the shadows under his eyes fleeing and his posture proudly straightening, his personality returned to what it had been pre-XANA: brave, feisty, and loyal, though he shucked some of the arrogance. He also began flirting with Yumi again, to Ulrich's chagrin, but it wasn't nearly as blatant as before, and the new respect each boy had for the other kept things from getting too nasty.

Things would have continued like this indefinitely, William reintegrating into the group (though there were some questions about Sissi's presence) and everyone resuming their normal lives outside of Lyoko.

But one night, Jeremy's laptop began picking up energy readings from the supercomputer.

* * *

"I knew it! You're sneaking off again to some secret hideout for some secret reason! I thought you guys were past this! Aren't we friends? Why can't you tell me what's going on?" Sissi demanded, having caught the warriors minus Yumi sneaking from the dorms less than half an hour after Jeremy called them all to go to the factory.

Ulrich and Jeremy looked at each other uncomfortably, each thinking about the times Sissi had discovered the supercomputer and how badly she'd reacted to it.

"Uh, well, we were just going on a late night walk!" Odd said, thinking along the same lines. To someone who knew him well, the excuse was painfully obvious.

Hurt splashed across Sissi's face. "Fine, keep your secrets!" she hissed, teary-eyed. "I should have known better than to expect more from you!" With that, she fled back to her room.

"How much you want to bet she'll be nosing into our business again like she used to? Or calling on the principal and Jim to get us in trouble?" Odd mused.

"Sucker's bet," Ulrich said, shaking his head.

"I feel kind of bad for her," Aelita said. "I mean, she's been trying to befriend us for forever, and now…"

Jeremy shook his head. "Yeah, it sucks. We can't do anything about it now, though. Let's just get to the factory."

The group ran through campus, careful to stay out of the light and out of Jim's sight, to the park where the manhole was. They were forced to traverse the sewers on foot, having removed their skateboards and scooters a few weeks after XANA had been destroyed.

"You know, I thought I'd never see this place again," Odd said as they climbed out onto the bridge to the factory. Yumi was waiting for them, having already successfully snuck out from her house.

"Yeah, me neither. What was it we agreed on? To leave the supercomputer alone?" Yumi chided, eyeing Jeremy.

"I kept some of my equipment hooked up to it in case something like this happened," Jeremy explained defensively. "At least it's not an emergency, like a XANA attack."

"What exactly were you getting from the supercomputer?" William asked as they traversed the bridge.

"I picked up signs of activity – strange energy spikes, to be exact," Jeremy replied. "If the supercomputer were off, I should be getting nothing, but…"

"You don't think someone else found the supercomputer and turned it back on?" Aelita said worriedly.

"Maybe," Jeremy grimaced. "We don't know for sure."

"Only one way to find out. Let's go!" Ulrich said, grasping one of the ropes in the factory that the warriors used to get from the second floor down to the first and jumping. The others quickly followed him, and everyone crowded into the elevator. Jeremy pressed the button to take them down, past the interface room and the scanner room to where the supercomputer itself was located, hidden in the depths of the abandoned factory. The supercomputer rose from the coolant that kept it from overheating when it was running, glinting gold and black and marked with the Eye of XANA.

"So this is the supercomputer?" William said, having not been down to the supercomputer chamber before.

"Yup," Jeremy said as he approached the two-tiered tower of wiring and circuits. A panel opened in the front of the supercomputer to reveal a lever that was pushed down.

"Uh, I'm no genius, but don't the gold bits glow when the supercomputer's on?" Odd pointed out as the warriors followed behind Jeremy.

"Yeah. And if the supercomputer were on, the lever would be up, not down," Aelita said, frowning.

"Odd, William, you check out the scanner room. Yumi and I will go up to the interface room; Ulrich and Aelita, stay down here," Jeremy ordered. "We need to figure out what's causing these energy readings. Call if you find anything."

"Roger that, Einstein," Odd said as he turned to get back in the elevator.

After dropping Odd and William off in the scanner room – which looked to not be in operation, the scanners completely dark – Yumi and Jeremy poked around in the interface room. Yumi tried to access the interface while Jeremy pulled out his laptop, connected it to the equipment he'd left in the factory, and got to work.

While Jeremy was typing away at his laptop, Odd called Yumi. "Anything?" Yumi asked.

"Nothing. It's completely dead down here. Is Jeremy certain he picked up something from the supercomputer?" Odd wondered.

"If he wasn't, we wouldn't be here," Yumi pointed out. "Hey, Jeremy, you getting anything over there?"

"Yeah," Jeremy said, brow furrowed in concentration. "There's some kind of reading emanating from the supercomputer itself. Nothing from the scanners, I assume?"

"Nope. Could it be the radioactive battery you had to replace?" Yumi asked.

Jeremy shook his head. "Thought about it, but no. The signature doesn't match any form of radioactivity known to man. Or any other form of energy or radiation, for that matter."

"That's weird," Yumi muttered.

"Tell everyone to gather back at the supercomputer. Whatever it is, it's not in the scanners or in the interface," Jeremy said.

Once everyone had returned to the supercomputer, Jeremy instructed, "Start taking off the outer panels of the supercomputer. I brought tools. Don't touch the inside; we just need to see what's in there. We need to find the source of the energy signal."

Ulrich asked, "So, what are we looking for?"

"Anything that looks out of place," Jeremy said. "We didn't really get a chance to mess around with the supercomputer itself with XANA around in case we damaged something. But now, it should be fine. Just be careful around the lead container for the nuclear battery." He pointed at a compartment set into the very bottom of the supercomputer facing the elevator.

"Yeah, let's absolutely poke at something that might irradiate us all if we misstep," Odd said sarcastically. "Great way to spend an evening."

"Jeremy and I will take the upper tier. Can you guys work on the bottom tier?" Aelita asked.

"Gotcha. Need a boost?" William said, stooping once he'd gotten close to the supercomputer and cupping his hands for Aelita to step on.

"Thanks," Aelita said as she scrambled onto the black and gold plating of the first tier. Jeremy followed soon after. "And hand us a small screwdriver, please."

The Lyoko Warriors got to work removing the plating from the supercomputer, avoiding the battery compartment. It took a couple of hours to expose the supercomputer's innards, but once they did, Jeremy was disappointed once he'd gotten down from the first tier to inspect their work. There was nothing special in the supercomputer, nothing that could account for the energy signal – just an abundance of wires and circuit boards crammed together. Maybe if they pushed the wires aside… but that might damage the supercomputer.

"I don't think there's anything here, Jeremy. Nothing that we could access easily, anyway," Aelita said, putting a comforting hand on Jeremy's shoulder.

"Yeah, you're right…" Jeremy said, sighing. "Sorry for dragging all of you out here in the middle of the night."

"No problem. It's part of being a Lyoko Warrior," Ulrich reassured.

Yumi, meanwhile, was looking at the supercomputer thoughtfully. "Did you try looking straight down into the computer from the top?" she asked.

"I… no," Jeremy replied, startled.

"Maybe we should give that a go before calling it a night," William suggested before he clambered onto the first tier, which was still plated so they would have something to stand on. He held out a hand to help Jeremy up before hoisting the smaller boy up on his shoulders.

"Whoa!" Jeremy cried, clutching at William's head. "Can you hold me like this?"

"You're not all that heavy," William chuckled. "Now, what do you see up there?"

"Another panel with the Eye of XANA," Jeremy replied, rubbing his hand over the symbol. "But I don't see anything out of the ordinary—huh?" His fingers had caught on a small latch at the center, invisible to the naked eye.

"What is it?" Aelita asked.

"There's something here," Jeremy replied, trying to figure out how to make the panel open. "Can you keep an eye on the readings I'm getting?"

"Sure," Aelita said as she retrieved Jeremy's laptop.

Finally, the top of the supercomputer popped open. Inside, there was a small black box with wires hooked into it from all sides and a small clasp holding it shut. Jeremy recognized wires that would connect to the battery and to the motherboard – whatever was in here was important. After relaying what he saw to his friends, he touched the box with his pointer finger.

"Oh! Jeremy, I think whatever's up there is causing the energy readings we're sensing," Aelita said. "What did you do?"

"I just touched it," Jeremy replied defensively, snatching his finger away.

"Can you disconnect it and bring it down?" Ulrich said. "If it's causing the readings, then it can't be good if it's hooked up to the supercomputer."

"I'm not sure that's a good idea," Jeremy hedged.

"You can reconnect everything if you need to, right?" Odd pushed.

"What if it's radioactive?" Jeremy argued.

"Is it held in a lead container?" Aelita pointed out.

"Well, no… I guess it's okay," Jeremy said, pulling at the cords. Strangely, each wire came off easily, as if it had barely been connected to the box. And when he looked at the box, there weren't any visible markings or indentations where the wires would have been plugged into.

"I'm not getting any more readings from the supercomputer," Aelita announced. "But… now there are some weird ambient energy signals in the room." She looked up as Jeremy and William climbed down from the supercomputer, the former holding a flawless black box.

"It's… warm," Yumi noted, stepping forward and covering the lid of the box with her palm.

"Should I open it to see what's inside? Or should we just return it to the supercomputer?" Jeremy asked.

William snorted. "We didn't come all this way to _not_ find out what was up with the supercomputer."

"He's right. Open it, Jeremy," Ulrich agreed.

"Okay, here we go," Jeremy said, undoing the clasp and opening the box.

Inside, there was a multifaceted stone, glittering black and silver. The Lyoko Warriors peered at it curiously.

"So… what is it?" Odd asked. "Some space—"

That was all Odd got out before there was a blinding flash of light, the echoing sound of a gong, and a metallic taste at the back of each warrior's mouth. They all collapsed, unconscious.

* * *

A/N:

…I know I said on my profile that I'd be returning to Shadowfall after updating TPF, but this little plot bunny just wouldn't let me go. I'm going to try to write as much of this as I can while it's still fresh and then get back to my older stories.

This first chapter, as you've probably read, is all Code Lyoko. We'll get to Miraculous Ladybug in a few chapters, don't worry.

It's been a while since I've watched Code Lyoko in its entirety, so there may be a few small details I get wrong. I guess just think of it as an AU that's uncannily like canon but not quite? I haven't really seen Evolution, either, so the characters may be a bit off from what they were in there.

Also, I know this chapter is pretty dialogue heavy with not a lot of action, but I needed to set up William's character and Sissi's character differently from what they were at the end of the show. Action will pick up soon.

Hope you enjoyed! And please leave a review!

-HM


	2. Changes

Chapter 2 – Changes

All was quiet and peaceful around the abandoned factory. Even though it was an eyesore, it couldn't be torn down – the owner of the property (some guy named Franz Hopper) had explicitly left instructions to leave the factory standing. So it remained for decades as a hangout for delinquents, until a group of teenagers started visiting for an entirely different reason – one more dangerous than anything anyone else could have fathomed.

Outside the factory, across the river and about a block away, a streetlamp flickered.

* * *

Jeremy's head throbbed and his chest itched as he slowly awoke. Colors blurred as he opened his eyes, and he fumbled around blearily for his glasses, which must have fallen off after… that light. He struggled to sit up and shove his glasses on his nose in the proper orientation.

The world cleared, and Jeremy whipped his head around as he saw all his friends lying on the floor, unconscious. The movement didn't help his headache, but he could care less. His entire body felt sore, probably from falling and then laying on the ground for some undetermined amount of time. He pushed himself shakily towards William, who was the closest one to him.

"William!" he said, his voice panicky. "William, wake up!" He put a hand on William's shoulder and shook him harder than he probably should have in his worry. But it paid off; William groaned and stirred.

"Wha… happened?" William slurred.

"I don't know. Can you sit up?" Jeremy asked.

William grunted before painstakingly easing his body off the ground. "What about the others?" William asked more clearly.

Jeremy gestured to Odd, Ulrich, Yumi, and Aelita, who were still sprawled, unconscious. "Help me wake them up." Instead of standing – because Jeremy wasn't sure he could manage that at the moment – he crawled toward Ulrich, while William scooted on his butt toward Yumi.

"I feel like I got stepped on by the Kolossus," Ulrich groaned as he awoke, absently scratching at his chest. Jeremy heard something about a bad devirtualization from Yumi, so she was okay, too. Then he crawled over to Aelita and shook her awake. It took her longer than the others to regain consciousness, but she eventually did, mumbling about her father.

"Okay, no more poking at weird things in the supercomputer," Odd said, his face pinched as if he were in pain. If his headache was anything like Jeremy's, he could sympathize.

"Everyone awake?" Yumi called.

There was a chorus of affirmatives, plus a "Not so loud; my head is killing me," from William. Everyone was awake – though perhaps not terribly comfortable, but it was enough to reassure Jeremy.

"How long have we even been out?" Ulrich wondered.

Yumi's eyes widened. "If it's been more than a few hours, my parents will kill me for sneaking out of the house," she moaned.

"Not to mention the detentions we'll get for missing class," Odd added.

"Aelita to the rescue; I've got my phone," Aelita said. "It's… around five in the morning. We came here around nine and spent a couple hours on the supercomputer. We were unconscious for _six whole hours_!"

"Could be worse," William said. "We have enough time to get back to bed unnoticed if we hurry."

"If we can even stand," Jeremy said. "My legs feel like jelly."

"I'm sure we can make it to our feet in time," Ulrich said, who had already made his way to the wall and was attempting to use it as a crutch to pull himself up.

Aelita suddenly gasped and pointed. "What happened to the supercomputer?!" she cried.

Distracted by their physical problems, the Lyoko Warriors hadn't paid any attention to their surroundings. They swiveled around to examine the supercomputer. There were some gasps and muffled swears from the rest of the warriors.

The supercomputer looked like it had been struck by lightning. The black and gold panels strewn on the ground from their examination had been scorched almost beyond recognition. The insulation around the wires had melted into a giant mess, and the metal within the wires looked like it had warped and glued together with the insulation beyond recognition. The circuit boards hidden deeper in the supercomputer appeared to have been blasted apart. There was no coolant left in the system. Thankfully, the lead compartment for the nuclear battery was still intact, though whether or not the contents had been affected was another story. And now that he was focusing on the devastation, Jeremy could pick up a faint smell of charred plastic and melted metal.

Jeremy heard footsteps before Ulrich hobbled into view, determinedly staying on his feet even though he looked like he wanted to collapse. He held out a hand in front of the supercomputer and grimaced. "This thing is radiating heat," Ulrich informed them.

Meanwhile, Aelita hadn't budged, and she looked like she was about to cry. All her father's hard work… gone. Completely gone. The last link to her father had somehow been rather spectacularly destroyed. Jeremy put a comforting arm around her, and she buried her face into Jeremy's shirt.

"Where's the box? And that stone?" William wondered.

"The box is over there," Ulrich said, pointing at a crumpled black shape along the wall that looked like a giant had stepped on it. "Don't know where the rock went."

"Anyone else find this super creepy and want to get out of here?" Odd said as Ulrich shuffled around the wrecked supercomputer.

"I want to check on the scanners and the interface. Maybe we can figure out what happened from clues up there," Jeremy said reasonably as William finally stood on shaky legs before helping Yumi up. Ulrich nearly fell over helping Odd, and Aelita and Jeremy both sank to the ground a number of times before they could get their feet underneath them and stumble into the elevator – which, thankfully, still worked.

The scanners weren't in much better condition than the supercomputer. One bulged in the center, like something had exploded inside of it. Another was leaning precariously, looking like it was about to fall over, and the last one had torn completely in two. There was hardly any yellowish paneling visible underneath the scorch marks, and the wiring was similarly destroyed as in the supercomputer.

The interface was almost completely gone. The hologram projector in the center of the room had warped almost beyond recognition, and the computer console looked like someone had tried to disintegrate it before giving up and merely blowing it apart.

"What a mess," Odd said, wrinkling his nose. "Let's get out of here."

"But we need to figure out what happened here!" Aelita protested, obviously upset.

"Home, remember? We can't be caught out. We can come back later," Yumi said. Reluctantly, everyone agreed, and the elevator dropped them off at the ground floor of the factory. At one end of the factory was a set of stairs that the warriors could use to return to the second level. The more athletic of the group would usually shimmy up the ropes, but weakened as they were, it would probably be a bad idea to try climbing.

Legs strengthened and headaches diminished as they continued walking, and in no time they were running back to their respective bedrooms. By some miracle, no one was caught out – Sissi hadn't tattled on them, thankfully.

Jeremy, still fully clothed, pulled the bed covers up over his head and waited for dawn.

* * *

"Didn't any of you sleep last night?" Ulrich wondered as he took in the sight of his friends at breakfast, all of whom had bags under their eyes. (Though he really couldn't say anything, as he was sure his lower eyelids were similarly bruised.) Their clothes were also rumpled – no one had changed from the clothes they'd worn the day before. Too unnerved, or perhaps there had been no time.

"You think we could sleep after seeing what happened to the supercomputer?" Odd said incredulously, picking unenthusiastically at his food in an uncharacteristic display.

"We were unconscious for a while," Yumi offered.

"Unconsciousness doesn't count as sleep, unfortunately," Jeremy informed them.

"Ugh," Odd groaned. "What even happened to the supercomputer?"

"Was it XANA?" William wondered, scowling at the thought of the AI and scratching absentmindedly at his chest.

"Couldn't have been. XANA's dead," Jeremy said with confidence.

Ulrich made the mistake of looking up past the group. Sissi glared at them from across the cafeteria, Nicholas and Herb sitting on each side of her and offering condolences. Noticing Ulrich's gaze, she decided to stomp over to the Lyoko Warriors. "I'm onto you," she growled. "And I'll have you know that I've returned to my _real_ friends, thanks."

"Look, Sissi…" William tried.

"Save it," she snapped. "I'm done listening to your excuses!" Then she returned to her table in a huff, where Nicholas and Herb tried to comfort her.

"You know, when I came to this place, I was not expecting to get sucked into a giant battle between good and evil on a virtual world – or to deal with all the secrets involved," Odd groaned, holding his head up with one hand.

"Do you regret it?" Aelita asked quietly. She'd been dealt the worst blow with the supercomputer gone, and it was showing.

Odd looked startled. "Of course not! I got the adventure of a lifetime, plus we got to save you," he replied, winking.

"So if it's not XANA, what else could have destroyed the supercomputer like that?" William asked.

"I don't know," Jeremy said, looking troubled. "An electrical surge powerful enough to destroy the supercomputer like that would have killed us, too."

"Maybe it was magic?" Ulrich suggested.

"What, like the Miraculous?" Jeremy said, startled. They'd been dealing with solid facts and figures for so long with the supercomputer that it was sometimes hard to remember that there were more forces in the world than just science. "Well… it's possible. But I find it hard to believe that Franz Hopper, a scientist through and through, would dabble in the mystical."

"You did say the other day that there was something about the supercomputer you didn't understand," Yumi pointed out.

"A lot of Franz Hopper's experiments were out of my reach," Jeremy replied defensively.

While Yumi and Jeremy discussed magic and its implications on the supercomputer, the other boys were having a different conversation entirely. "Chat Noir is totally stealing my style," Odd grumbled, reminded of just who was using the Miraculous by Jeremy's mention of it.

"Knock it off, Odd," Ulrich said, rolling his eyes. It wasn't the first time Odd had complained about Chat Noir.

"What? Afraid I'm going to get akumatized?" Odd teased.

"Akumatizations only really occur downtown," William pointed out. "I've never heard of an akuma as far south as we are in Sceaux."

"There's a first time for everything," Ulrich said pessimistically.

"Okay, it might be magic, but we also can't rule out a more scientific explanation for what happened to the supercomputer," Jeremy said.

"That's fair," Yumi agreed. "Are we going back to the factory after class?"

"Of course," Jeremy confirmed before turning his attention to Aelita, who was picking despondently at her food. "Uh, Aelita, are you okay?"

"No," she replied humorlessly. "I want to know what destroyed my father's work." It was a reasonable desire.

"You heard that we're going back to the factory after class? We'll figure it out then," Jeremy said reassuringly.

* * *

It was hard getting through the school day, pretending everything was normal, but the warriors put in an admirable effort. Everything was fine until PE – or, rather, until the boys changed in the locker rooms for PE.

"Nice tattoo, Jeremy," Nicholas snickered.

"Huh?" Jeremy asked confusedly, looking down at his chest. At what should have been his _bare_ chest – except that there was a colored mark directly over his heart. He stared at it with growing fear. The mark was blue, with what looked like thin veins connecting to it. But what was worrisome was that the mark was shaped exactly like the Eye of XANA – except upside-down, from everyone but Jeremy's perspective. There was no other way to interpret its appearance except as being related to the incident the night before.

He looked up and met the wide eyes of Ulrich and Odd, who were both horrified. Without answering Nicholas, Jeremy threw on his shirt and all three boys tore through the locker room to the mirrors, ignoring the confused exclamations from their classmates. Ulrich and Odd all but ripped out of their shirts, and Jeremy raised his to get a better look. They all were marked with an upside-down Eye of XANA – Jeremy's in blue, Ulrich's in yellow, and Odd's in purple. They gaped for a bit before they drew too much attention from their classmates and had to put their shirts back on.

"We have to get back to the factory and figure out what happened," Jeremy breathed.

"Belpois! Stern! Della Robbia! Quit lazing around and get out there!" Jim bellowed before the boys could run off.

"Jim, we have to go to the infirmary!" Ulrich said, still pale.

Jim scowled at them. "No excuses! You've used that enough times to skip PE in the past! Get out there!" So Odd, Ulrich, and Jeremy trudged nervously out to the track, where the rest of their classmates waited. Nicholas and Herb were snickering to each other.

"I mean, nothing weird has happened so far," Odd said hopefully. "Maybe it's just a superficial thing?"

Jeremy grunted. "Just because nothing's happened so far doesn't mean that nothing will. I have no idea what these markings are."

"Stern! Lacroix! Pichon! Ducrocq! You're up!" Jim hollered, gesturing for the four boys to take their places in the lanes of the track. Antoine Lacroix, hands down the fastest boy in the grade and a rising track star, smirked at the others. Herb Pichon looked intimidated while Matthieu Ducrocq was as unaffected as ever. Ulrich just rolled his eyes. In his opinion, Antoine could benefit from deflating his head a little.

"And… go!" Jim announced, blowing his whistle. Ulrich and Antoine were off like a shot, with Mattheiu following behind in lanky strides and Herb struggling to keep from falling on his face.

"Wow, Ulrich's really in top form today," Odd noted. "But… there goes Antoine. He's seriously fast."

Jeremy saw a flash of frustration on Ulrich's face as Antoine pulled ahead. "It's not a huge surprise."

"Do you think the girls and William have the mark on them, too?" Odd asked, lowering his voice so he wouldn't be overheard.

"Probably. We need to tell them as soon as possible, if they haven't found them already," Jeremy answered, his eyes tracking Ulrich's form.

"Well, lunch isn't too far off – wait a – whoa!" Odd exclaimed as Ulrich suddenly picked up speed, passing Antoine easily and advancing toward the finish line. "I don't think I've ever seen him move that fast, not even when we were being chased by XANA's monsters!"

Jeremy was about to respond when suddenly his vision was assaulted by glowing blue binary, which floated through the air and gathered around anything electrically powered and, for some reason, Ulrich and Odd. A blink, and the binary was gone. Jeremy shook his head, dismissing what he'd seen as an illusion caused by too little sleep.

Ulrich was just a blur when he crossed the finish line. Once he'd stopped, he bent over and panted a bit, but he recovered remarkably quickly for someone who'd run that fast, even taking all the running he'd done during XANA's attacks into consideration.

"I… think you just set a new record for the 400-meter dash, Stern," Jim said weakly, staring at the timer in his hand.

Then Antoine crossed the finish line, a snarl on his face. After he'd recovered from running, he stomped up to Ulrich and accused, "You cheated!"

"I didn't! How would you even cheat at running, anyway?" Ulrich defended.

"What did you take?" Antoine asked, voice lowering dangerously. "I'll tell the principal you're on drugs."

Odd, having moved to break up the argument, caught the tail end of that statement. "How dare you!" he hissed, flexing his fingers and resisting the sudden confusing urge to rake his nails across the other boy's face.

"Look, I'm not taking anything. I think it was just a fluke. I'm sure you'll beat me like usual next time we race," Ulrich said reasonably, trying to diffuse the situation.

"Fine," Antoine agreed. "But don't think I'm not going to keep an eye on you."

"Good riddance," Odd grumbled, leading Ulrich back to Jeremy, who'd been watching the entire exchange.

"Did you see that, Jeremy? What a dick! Can't take a loss gracefully, can he?" Odd said, still steaming.

"You're not all that much of a graceful loser yourself, Odd," Ulrich pointed out.

"Please, Ulrich, I am the definition of humility and grace," Odd sniffed.

"Hey Odd, could I see your hands?" Jeremy asked, eyes wide.

"Sure thing, Einstein. I – huh?" Odd stared down at his outstretched hands in confusion. Was it just him, or were those claws on the tips of his fingers? Then he blinked, and his fingernails were back to normal.

"Jeremy, I think I'm hallucinating," Odd said, turning his hands over.

"If you're hallucinating, you're not the only one," Jeremy said grimly, thinking of the binary he'd seen for a split second. "We need to get back to the factory. Call the others."

* * *

Meanwhile, Yumi and William were having problems in chemistry class. It was an experiment day, with students required to combine six different solutions in pairs and to figure out the content of each solution based on the reaction that occurred.

"Ugh! This is impossible," William grumbled, adjusting the straps on his lab goggles.

"It's not all that bad – whoops," Yumi said, spilling almost the entire beaker of one solution into another. There was a split second where both warriors wondered if they'd get off lucky, but then the second beaker started fizzing, and an explosion of foam splattered all over the ceiling and all over William and Yumi. There was some screaming as the foam made its way to other work tables.

"Sorry, Mrs. Hertz," Yumi said as she and William made their way to the emergency shower. They were drenched with cold water in short order, Mrs. Hertz glaring at them while trying to rein in the other students.

"Well, class is dismissed for the day," Mrs. Hertz finally sighed. "Dunbar, Ishiyama, is there any more of the experiment on you? No? Then go get changed into some dry clothes. I'll excuse you from the rest of your classes today."

"Thanks, Mrs. Hertz," William said as he slipped his hand into Yumi's and started dragging her from the classroom. "We'll do that."

"Wh-what are you doing?" Yumi asked through chattering teeth.

"My dorm's closer," William explained, shaking from the cold. "You can change into something of mine. We're about the same size. I figured it would be better than trying to walk home like that."

"Uh, yeah," Yumi agreed, blushing. She liked Ulrich, despite his stubborn insistence on let's-just-be-friends. But going into William's dorm room and wearing some of his clothes… Even if it was the most practical solution, taking William's crush into account, it was still embarrassing.

Hopefully, Ulrich wouldn't find out about this.

Yumi fidgeted and shivered in her wet clothes as William rifled around in his closet. She'd been in his dorm room before while reigning in his supercomputer-generated clone, but it was a lot different with William himself occupying it.

"Huh?" William said, dragging Yumi from her thoughts. His arm was still buried in his closet, but then he pulled his arm completely from it and stared at it in confusion.

"What's wrong? Find the doorway to Narnia back there?" Yumi teased, still shivering.

"I – don't think so," William replied. He slowly returned his arm into the closet, and now that she was looking, she could see the way the shadows seemed to thicken and mist around his hand. It reminded her of the Super Smoke he'd been able to utilize under XANA's control – or maybe it had been his inherent technique in his Lyoko form that he hadn't been able to figure out before XANA got him. Either way, she was chilled for a reason other than her sopping clothes.

"We should probably tell Jeremy about that," Yumi said.

"Yeah," William agreed shakily. He hastily rooted around in his closet once more, steadfastly ignoring how the shadows danced around his arm, and emerged with a t-shirt for some rock band he enjoyed and jeans, which he tossed at Yumi, who held an arm out to catch them.

The clothes never made it to Yumi. Instead, they stopped about halfway between William and Yumi, floating five feet off the ground. There was a moment of silence before Yumi squeaked and withdrew her hand, and the clothes fell to the floor in a heap.

"Uh," William said weakly. Then his phone started buzzing, and he snatched it up from where he'd deposited it on his desk. "Jeremy?" he said, fighting to keep his voice calm. "Meet at the factory?... Yeah. We've had some incidents here, too… A mark…? Let me check." For some reason, William peered down the front of his shirt and paled. "Yeah, I've got one, it's silver… Hang on a sec." William turned to face Yumi, completely serious. "Jeremy says we've all got the Eye of XANA on our chests. I have one. Can you check yours?"

"Give me a moment," Yumi said, turning around. Normally, asking a girl to peek down the front of her shirt would be considered highly rude, but this was an emergency, so Yumi really couldn't care less about propriety. She saw nothing until she lifted the edge of her bra – and there, on her left breast, was the mark she'd been told to look for.

"You got one?" William asked lowly.

"Yeah, it's dark purple. No, call it plum," Yumi replied, shaken.

"Yeah, she's got one, plum colored…" William relayed to Jeremy. "We'll come as soon as we can." William took a deep breath as he hung up and met Yumi's gaze.

"Factory?" she asked.

William nodded. "Get changed, fast," he said. He respectfully turned around while he pulled out a change of clothes for himself.

Instead of going to the communal bathroom to change, Yumi turned her back on William and started stripping out of her wet clothes. This was a crisis, and embarrassment about social transgressions could come later. Thankfully, her underwear wasn't too badly soaked. She'd just have to deal until she got home. Although…

"If you're looking, I will punch you in the nose," Yumi threatened while slipping the slightly baggy t-shirt over her head.

"I'm not!" William quickly reassured.

* * *

Aelita sulked in her room, curled up on her bed. She should have gone to class, but she was feeling miserable, and she didn't want to try to put in the effort to act like nothing was wrong.

Her father was gone, as well as her last link to him. She didn't know what had happened to her mother following her kidnapping, but she was probably dead after all these years. All the others had families, but she had no one left. Just a decrepit house hidden in the woods and a ruined supercomputer.

She thought a little more about her mother, conjuring in her mind what she could remember of her. Her hair was pink, though a different shade than Aelita's. She had a nice smile, really enjoyed snowball fights, was fantastic at cooking meatloaf but burned just about everything else… and that was it. Her memory had faded over all the years she'd spent dormant on Lyoko. Aelita struggled not to cry.

…Her father had once said that she looked a lot like her mother. Maybe, if she looked in a mirror hard enough, she'd remember something more?

Aelita rolled off her bed and shakily made her way over to the stool in front of the vanity. She peered into the mirror. Pink hair. Light hazel eyes. Small nose. Heart-shaped face. She looked the same as ever – except something was wrong, distracting her from the thoughts of her family. She stared at her reflection in the mirror for a few moments before she realized what was off about it.

Her ears. Her ears were pointed like an elf's – or, rather, pointed like her Lyoko form's ears. Closing her eyes, she reached up to feel at her right ear and found it to be rounded, no pointiness that she'd been expecting. And when she opened her eyes and looked back in the mirror, her reflection appeared normal.

"I've lost so much sleep I'm losing my mind," Aelita mumbled, scrubbing her hands over her face. She stood from her vanity and flopped onto her bed, an arm over her eyes.

She would have been content to lay there until dinnertime when she got a frantic call from Jeremy. Aelita immediately sat up as Jeremy relayed what had happened during gym. Maybe she hadn't been hallucinating about her ears. And when she peeked down her shirt – yep, there was a pink upside-down mark of XANA tattooed over her heart.

Aelita immediately grabbed some of the electronic equipment in her room and scrambled to get to the factory.

* * *

First mention of the Miraculous and magic! It's been specifically said that there are more superheroes in canon!ML than just those with the Miraculous, so I'm delving into that here.

Sceaux is a suburb south of downtown Paris and beyond the arrondissements. Since we don't see akuma attacks too far from downtown, I thought it would be reasonable that none of the Kadic students have been akumatized – yet.

Hope you enjoyed! And thank you for all your nice reviews! Next chapter should be out in a few days.

-HM


	3. Power

Chapter 3 – Power

"Have you seen the marks?"

"Yeah, I—"

"Yumi, why are you in one of William's t-shirts?"

"Accident during chemistry. There was no time to stop by my house. Quit looking so jealous, Ulrich; nothing happened."

"—and then he went fwoosh straight down the track, like he'd activated his Super Sprint!"

"Does this mean XANA's back?"

"—my hands, there were claws—"

"—my clothes were just _suspended_ in midair—"

"Everything's happening so fast!"

"—I only noticed my ears when I looked in the mirror—"

"—Nicholas was the one to point it out—"

Unlike the usual silence or quiet discussion typical of the group when using the elevator, each warrior was babbling worriedly to each other about the events that had happened that morning. The consequences of skipping their afternoon classes didn't even cross their minds; this situation was more important.

Unfortunately, when they disembarked the elevator in the supercomputer's chamber, they found that nothing had changed – still the same destruction they'd seen before dawn. No easy answer to their predicament showed itself.

"This is just perfect! What are we supposed to do about this?" Odd wailed, flailing. "Ack!" he screeched as he noticed that his fingers were tipped with claws again.

"Okay, let's think through this rationally," Yumi said, taking a deep breath to find her calm despite the crisis – a skill she'd honed over years of XANA attacks.

"We have clues as to what happened. We just have to use them to solve this mystery, like any detective," Ulrich added, Yumi's composure quelling the panic that wanted to consume the group.

"We have a trashed supercomputer—" Yumi pointed at the remains of the once impressive piece of technology, "—marks on our chests that are colored, upside-down Eyes of XANA—" She tapped on her chest, above her heart, "—and weird things are happening to us. Someone list them?"

"Well, Odd's growing claws, Aelita's ears are sometimes pointed, Ulrich's suddenly much faster, Yumi lifted something via telekinesis, my hand sank into shadow, and Jeremy saw binary. That's everyone, right?" William said.

Aelita looked grim. "All these incidences… they have something in common."

"I noticed it, too," Jeremy agreed. "Everything we're suddenly doing… they're abilities we had on Lyoko."

"You could see binary on Lyoko, Einstein?" Odd wondered, flexing his clawed fingers.

Jeremy fidgeted, disgruntled that he had to think of the few times he'd been virtualized, none of which had been pleasant. "Kind of. It was more like I could see the code that made up Lyoko, if I wanted to. It wasn't terribly useful, though."

"So, what, our Lyoko forms are, like, bleeding into the real world, or something?" William surmised.

"It should be impossible," Jeremy admitted. "There were a lot of safeties in place to reconstruct the material bodies exactly as the scanners read them, no mixing between Lyoko and the material world."

"Well, it's happening, so it's possible," Aelita pointed out. "But the timing…"

"It has to have something to do with why the supercomputer's fried," Ulrich said.

"Possibly that stone in the supercomputer, too. That's where all the weird energy readings were coming from," Jeremy added, turning on the laptop he'd been forced to leave in the factory the previous night which had inexplicably escaped the destruction of the supercomputer. "Maybe, if we can locate the stone and analyze it, we can figure out what happened. It shouldn't be too hard with the sensors that are installed on my laptop." Jeremy typed on his laptop, bringing up the sensors. "Now, let's see what we've got… …um."

"Well, what is it, Einstein?" Odd asked.

"That energy signature… It's coming from inside all of us," Jeremy breathed.

"What? Let me see," Aelita demanded, nudging Jeremy aside. "No way," she gasped as she saw the readings.

"So… what does that mean?" Ulrich asked.

"I don't know," Jeremy admitted, perturbed. "I can't even begin to explain what's happening to us."

"So we're going to be stuck like this forever?" Odd demanded, waving around hands that were still sporting claws – and, worse, starting to grow a thin fuzz of purple fur that matched his Lyoko form. "Argh!"

"I'm beginning to think that Ulrich's idea of magic this morning might have some merit," Aelita suggested, eyeing Odd's purple-mottled hands.

"There's got to be a scientific explanation for this…" Jeremy insisted.

"Modern science can only take us so far. Science worked with the supercomputer, but this is beyond that. We have to look at the alternatives," Yumi rebutted. "Researching magic is at least a place to start. We can't just dismiss it out of hand."

"Fine," Jeremy conceded, pulling up a web browser. "You all have your phones, right? Could you help?"

"I mean, no problem, but I'm not sure what we're looking for," William said.

"Someone start with the history of magic – why don't you do that, William? Ulrich, you look up the types of magic. Yumi, the effects of magic. Aelita, examples of magic today. Odd… I'll leave you to try to fix that," Jeremy instructed, pointing at Odd's hands. "I'll try to find anything about the relationship between science and magic."

There was a chorus of agreements as everyone whipped out their phones (minus Odd, who sat crossed-legged and stared at his hands, brow furrowed in concentration).

"I've got something," William said about five minutes later. Everyone paused in their searches to listen. "It says here that the origin of magic is unknown but that it was utilized by cultures all around the world."

"We learned about the basics in class," Ulrich pointed out. "Is there anything useful?"

"I'm getting there," William glared. "According to this, ancient cultures utilized magic by trapping it in objects. Wild magic is rare now. Something about it being dangerous…"

"Well, so is fire, but that didn't stop us from using it," Yumi commented.

"There's a lot here on how different cultures interacted with magic, both religious and secular. The Chinese trapped it in jewelry. The Asian cultures mostly followed the Chinese example – except India; they combined magic with their religious practices – while Western cultures tied magic to tools and weapons. African cultures bound magic to amulets and beads for divination. Native American tribes tied it to ritual objects and Pacific Islanders and Middle Easterners used it for navigation and transportation, though the former was more religious and the latter more scientific. Very few of these magical items are still in use today, but it is thought that many have been hidden away in tombs and the like," William lectured. "Oh! And there's a little bit here about wild magic sometimes manifesting in living beings instead of just places, but that's really rare…"

"It's a start," Aelita said once William had finished talking. "Could magic be bound in something like the stone we found in the supercomputer?"

"Uh," William said, swiping on his phone. "Only objects changed by humans can hold magic well. It says magic seeps out of naturally occurring things."

"So I guess that rock couldn't hold magic, then?" Ulrich inferred.

"Didn't the stone look deliberately shaped, though?" Yumi argued.

"Didn't get a good enough look at it. I mean, it's possible," Ulrich admitted.

Jeremy conjured an image of the rock in his mind. He remembered it was black and silver. Lots of tiny facets, glinting like mirrors. It wasn't big enough to fill the box it had been in – but it hadn't rattled around when he'd tilted the box. Had it been stuck to the box? In fact, thinking back, Jeremy thought he remembered the facets ending in smooth edges at the bottom, but he couldn't be sure. He hadn't had much time to examine it before it mysteriously disappeared in a flash of light, left them all unconscious, and wrecked the supercomputer. …Putting everything like that, it was no wonder the others had jumped to a conclusion of magic.

"So, we can't be sure if the stone was manmade or not," Jeremy concluded. "We need more information. Has anyone else found anything?"

"I think we need a little more time," Yumi said, gesturing with her phone.

"I'll keep looking at the history of magic," William said.

About ten minutes later, Yumi piped up, "I've got a bunch of information here on the effects of magic. It can be willfully used for good or for evil, though certain magic objects like Excalibur and sets like the Miraculous are naturally aligned toward one or the other. Magic is typically used to enhance natural human abilities, but there are a lot of other things it can do, too. Illusions, manipulation of elements. Some of the most powerful magic can even affect time and space."

"Can magic cherry-pick things to affect? Like leaving us alone but targeting the supercomputer?" Odd asked.

"I think so. I mean, Ladybug can restore things affected by akuma but not anything else," Ulrich pointed out.

"I found a tally of all the magical items that have been used in the past two hundred years, regardless if they've been lost in that time or not," Aelita added. "Here in France, we have the Chinese Miraculous. Brazil has the Chinese Sigils, though only one is in use today. India, apparently, had a lot of magic items, but they've been largely lost, and the few left are scattered. African divination has been suppressed by centuries of Western exploitation, and the associated items hidden or destroyed. The Sacreds are buried in the sands of Egypt, though one was found in 1915 and was on display in a museum until it was stolen. The Spirits of the Americas have also been scattered around the globe due to European influence. Some of the Manas from the Pacific Islands have been gifted to England, and the others are still used in their native lands for conservation and protection. The Celestials of the Middle East… there was a sighting of one in 1851, but they've disappeared since then. And no one has seen the bulk of European-produced magic for a long time – these were largely weapons, though there are two known sets of items: the Jinxes and the Marvelous, both lost to the ages but thought to still be hidden on the European continent," Aelita listed.

"Any of those similar to the stone we found in the supercomputer?" Yumi asked.

Aelita bit her lip. "I was looking for locations of magic, not what each kind does. Plus, if there's magic in the supercomputer, it could be something older that my father rediscovered and wouldn't have been listed here."

"The folklore on magic describes hundreds of magical items, but there are only a handful left today," William added. "And we don't know how accurate the folklore is, anyway."

"I've got some stuff on the types of magic," Ulrich interjected. "Like Yumi said, magic can be aligned toward good or evil, but it's the user that determines exactly how that magic is used. Some magic can affect physical things, while other types are mental. Some can affect both. Also, most magic items have some sort of symbol associated with them – one of the Sacreds is associated with a stylized scarab, and Chat Noir's Miraculous is marked by a green-on-black paw print."

"The stone didn't have any markings on it," William pointed out.

"But we didn't see the bottom of the stone. Maybe there was something there," Aelita suggested.

"So basically, if Jeremy doesn't come back with something conclusive, we still have no idea what happened," Yumi summarized, her expression souring.

"Aha! I got my hands back to normal!" Odd announced, showing off clawless and furless hands.

"It took you all this time to get rid of the claws and fur?" Ulrich asked skeptically.

"Hey, it's harder than it looks!" Odd defended. "It's not like there's a manual for this kind of thing!"

"So, what have you found, Jeremy?" Aelita asked before the boys could start fighting.

"Well, a lot of European and Middle Eastern magic was trapped in objects that had some potential use, like weapons or astrolabes," Jeremy said. "But mostly I've just found a bunch of scientific articles postulating on the existence of magic and trying to replicate it in a laboratory setting, which has been largely unsuccessful. Anyone find anything else of note?"

"I've found a lot of cool historical examples of magic being used, like old Miraculous and Celestial users and others with superpowers," William chimed in, swiping down on his phone. "Nothing particularly interesting – wait a second… oh my god."

"What is it?" Yumi asked.

"Someone look up the Marvelous, please," William said, a little choked.

"I got it!" Odd volunteered, jumping on the opportunity to help since he'd been largely distracted thus far. "Let's see, the Marvelous set was created in Europe, according to Arthurian legend. They were meant to be attached to something to make it magical, like the Miraculous. Um, the symbols for the Marvelous are a… swirly triangle thing? What looks like two water ripples colliding – oh, wow, one of them is a swastika, though apparently this one is aligned for good? Guess Hitler didn't get the memo – a "Y" with the lower line extending up to bisect the area between the "V," this one looks like—" Odd stopped. Peered at the screen of his phone. Squinted. "Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?"

"Let me see," William said, peering over Odd's shoulder. "Yep." He showed Odd whatever he'd found on his own phone.

"What is it?" Aelita asked impatiently.

"Conclusive evidence," William replied, holding out his phone. Pictured was an old carving of a very familiar symbol – the Eye of XANA, upside-down, just like the marks on their chests.

Jeremy gaped. "Okay, maybe the magic theory does have some merit," he said weakly.

"What does it mean for us, then?" Ulrich asked pragmatically.

"It means Franz Hopper hooked up a Marvelous to the supercomputer. That's probably what powered the Return to the Past and the scanners. How on earth did he find a Marvelous, though? They're supposed to be lost," Yumi wondered.

"Tell us more about the Marvelous," Aelita demanded.

"Well, there's more here about the Miraculous, to be honest," Odd said, scrolling through the site. "The Miraculous are all tied to an animal and can transform whoever wears them into a superhero with that animal theme. According to lore, the Marvelous… they're more malleable. They draw out and manifest the inner strengths of whoever… is bonded with them? What does that mean?"

Yumi and Aelita exchanged a meaningful glance. "Whatever bonding means… we might all be bonded with the Marvelous," Aelita deduced. "I mean, we're marked, and it's drawing our Lyoko forms into the real world."

"Wait, so we're magic now?" Odd exclaimed.

"It's just a theory," Jeremy interjected.

"A theory that fits," William muttered.

"Okay, running on the assumption that the Marvelous is behind all this, what does that mean for us?" Yumi asked.

"There's nothing more on this site," Odd said, tapping at his phone and frowning.

"Wait! There's a problem here," Aelita said, staring at her phone after pulling up some more information on the Marvelous. "A Marvelous will only bond with one person at a time, like a Miraculous. So how is it that we're all affected?"

"Maybe that stone held a bunch of Marvelous?" Ulrich suggested.

"Can't be. We all have the same mark, meaning there's just one Marvelous behind this. But how?" Aelita wondered, frowning.

The group sat in silence for a while, mulling over the problem. "Maybe it has something to do with how it was attached to the supercomputer," Jeremy finally said, making an intuitive leap as he flashed through the Internet to look for information. "I mean, there's nothing about using magic as a power source for something as advanced as a supercomputer, or even for combining it with technology at all. This is totally new. It stands to reason that the Marvelous might have changed to adapt to new circumstances."

"So basically, all the stuff we can find online won't help because the Marvelous is different than it was in the past," Odd summarized glumly.

"I didn't say that," Jeremy protested. "It's probably not completely different. I mean, its symbol is still the same, and it's still drawing out our inner strengths – our Lyoko forms."

"It just… somehow split between us, then?" Aelita theorized. "How does that even work?"

"I wish this stuff came with an instruction manual," Ulrich grumbled. "Right now it feels like we're groping in the dark for answers."

"We _are_ groping in the dark for answers," Yumi corrected.

"I've got something more," William said. "Each Marvelous has a specific power, like the Miraculous. It doesn't say what that power is, though."

"It was probably the Return to the Past," Jeremy murmured. "I mean, that's the only program on the supercomputer that stands out to me as possibly powered by magic."

"What about virtualization? The scanners?" Ulrich asked.

Jeremy tapped his chin pensively. "There was definitely a scientific component to the scanners. But I'll bet the Marvelous provided the safe connection between the material world and the virtual world."

"So if we, what, concentrated hard enough we could initiate a Return to the Past?" Yumi guessed skeptically.

"I don't think that's how it works…" Aelita replied, frowning thoughtfully.

There was a moment of silence as the warriors pondered the problem. "Okay, to summarize: we've all been bonded with a Marvelous, which somehow split between all of us. We don't know how to control it. We don't know why it split or why it probably trashed the supercomputer. Is there anything I missed about our current situation?" Jeremy said.

"I've got a question: why is the Eye of XANA upside-down?" Odd wondered.

"I can answer that," Yumi said. "Remember how magical items sometimes have alignments? The ones that don't, align themselves according to their users, and the symbol changes accordingly. Evil is supposed to be upside-down."

"So, wait, the tattoos on our chests are really right side up while the Eye of XANA is the one that's upside-down?" Ulrich guessed.

"That's what it looks like," Yumi said.

"So if this mark isn't the Eye of XANA… what is it? And why is it on the supercomputer upside-down?" Odd asked.

"The Eye of XANA was originally meant to be the symbol for Lyoko," Aelita explained. "It probably has something to do with its origins in Project Carthage, which could be interpreted as an evil endeavor. As for what the original symbol is… I don't know."

"I just did an image search," William announced, "and there are a bunch of records of this symbol in relation to the Marvelous. According to the texts, it's called the… I have no idea how to pronounce this. Um, the rough translation from Old English is 'the true-seeing eye of inner power…' that's a mouthful. There's another name for it, too – the Eye of Aetir. What the heck is an aetir? Hang on, let me do a search… Apparently it's the name of some pagan deity? Whose ability was to see into the hearts of men to judge them worthy or not… to procreate with her to create demigods."

Odd wrinkled his nose. "Gross."

"Is there anything more about this Aetir?" Aelita asked.

"Not much. She's pretty obscure," William answered.

"So we're just about back to square one," Ulrich sighed.

"Not quite. We do have a better idea of what's going on. I – huh?" Jeremy said, typing at his laptop. "I just got an email… from Franz Hopper!"

"What?" Aelita gasped, immediately straightening. "From my father? What's it say?"

Jeremy cleared his throat. " _To the Lyoko Warriors: if you are reading this, then I am dead and the supercomputer has been destroyed. You may have already discovered this, but the reason the supercomputer was so advanced was because I connected it to a Marvelous – a magical item – I found in the Swiss mountains. The Marvelous is powerful, and it must not fall into the wrong hands. Please keep it safe._

 _I have been studying the Marvelous for years, now, and I still don't quite understand it. However, I do know that someone scanned into the computer is also imprinted on the Marvelous._ "

Yumi made an understanding noise. "So the Marvelous split because all of us were imprinted on it?"

Jeremy continued, " _As for the destruction of the supercomputer… you have likely tampered with the Marvelous. Magic items were not meant to be bound to and used by technology in such a way that I have, and whatever consciousness resides in it will have likely lashed out against the supercomputer should the restraints and couplings containing its power fail._ "

"Whoa, whoa, hold on. Consciousness?" Odd said disbelievingly.

"At least we know for certain what wrecked the supercomputer," William said.

" _The Marvelous must not be allowed to bond with XANA. And it_ can _bond with XANA – all it needs is an intelligent mind, artificial or not._ "

"Well, at least we don't need to worry about that. XANA's gone," Aelita said firmly.

" _Finally, whichever one of you it chooses, if it has done so, I hope you use it wisely. And to Aelita…_ Here, I'd better let you read this," Jeremy said, passing the laptop to Aelita, who read her father's message to her and teared up. "What's it say? If you want to share."

"He… told me that he was proud of me and to not be too sad that he's gone," Aelita replied, still staring at the computer screen. Jeremy hesitantly approached her and hugged her. "Thanks, Jeremy."

"So, even Franz Hopper didn't know that the Marvelous could split. That's reassuring," Ulrich said sarcastically.

"And what about that consciousness he mentioned? Is no one else creeped out by that?" Odd demanded.

"Well, maybe this consciousness will have some answers," William pointed out. "I say we try to get in contact with it."

"How?" Ulrich said.

"Maybe by meditating?" Yumi suggested.

"Is this even a good idea?" Odd asked.

"We've exhausted the conventional routes. Does anyone else have any other information-gathering ideas? No? Then let's try that," William instructed, a tad fed up with the arguing and lack of answers. "It's a good idea."

"Okay. So… how do we meditate?" Aelita said.

"I got this," Yumi and Ulrich said at the same time. There was a slight pause as they got over their embarrassment of speaking together (coupled with Odd's suggestive looks), before Yumi continued, "Most forms of martial arts training also teach you how to meditate. I'll show you how." Yumi quickly walked around the group, directing each to sit in a comfortable position and to close their eyes. "Now clear your mind and focus on your breathing. In… out… in… out… Let your thoughts come to you as they will, but let them drift away. In… out… in… out…"

About fifteen minutes of relative silence passed before Odd's stomach let out a ferocious growl. There was some giggling, and the meditation was broken.

"Anyone feel anything?" Yumi asked as William needled Odd.

"Nothing. I couldn't stop thinking about lunch. I'm _starving_ ," Odd said, rubbing his stomach.

"How about we try one more thing before going out to lunch?" Aelita suggested. "I actually thought I felt something. It was fragmented, but it was there. Why don't we try holding hands this time? See if we can connect with the Marvelous better if it's together."

Everyone looked at each other. "I don't see why not," Yumi said slowly.

"I'm not holding Odd's hand. Who knows where it's been?" William joked.

"Ha ha," Odd said, rolling his eyes and holding his hands out for William and Ulrich to take. Once everyone had joined hands in a circle, Yumi started the meditation again.

It took a few minutes, but this time, it was different. The Lyoko Warriors could see each other standing against a black background, even though their eyes were closed. In the center of their circle was a fractured white sphere of light that hummed and was missing a chunk of itself.

"What are you?" Jeremy's voice echoed, though his physical mouth did not move.

There was a faint buzzing. It sounded like someone was attempting to speak, but they couldn't make their voice heard.

"Can you help us?" Aelita tried. Again, nothing but static.

Odd's stomach roared again, breaking the spell and sending the warriors careening back into the real world. "Odd!" Yumi said crossly.

"Sorry! I can't help it!" Odd moaned.

"Well, at least we got something? Why don't we try again after getting some food?" Aelita suggested.

"Aelita, you're an angel. Let's go eat!" Odd said.

* * *

Forgot to say this in the notes last chapter: don't worry about Lyoko! It'll come back… eventually. The supercomputer, scanners, and interface are well and truly trashed, though.

SO MUCH WORLDBUILDING. Taking what ML creator said about lots of different superheroes in the world meaning lots of different magic and running with it. Aetir (pronounced like aether) is not the name of a real deity, but I figured, since this world is different than ours (with magic and all), that there would be some magic-related deities we don't have.

-HM


End file.
